A new conservation easement in Colorado. Artificial Intelligence (AI) in news. Ag buildings should have been exempt from the latest round of energy efficiency requirements.
A new conservation easement in Colorado.
I have written in the past about conservation easements, specifically in the context of swampiness with regard to such things (and wolf policy) in the Polis administration. The first link below is to an earlier newsletter if you want to read up on that.
Since then, I've had it on bubbling away on the back burner and have kept an eye out for more on conservation easements. The second link below is to a Sky Hi News (GrandCo) article on one of the newest big conservation easements in Colorado.
The City of Granby put 743 acres of land within or adjacent to the city itself into a conservation easement with Colorado Headwaters Land Trust back in mid-December. Some of the land will have trails and some will be closed to recreation as wildlife habitat.
This brings the total acreage up to 10113 acres held in conservation easements by Colorado Headwaters Land Trust in Grand County (the Trust has multiple easements across GrandCo, see their website linked third below).
Is this good or bad? I suppose that depends on your perspective. A conservation easement will prevent development. On the other hand, it seems as though it will also prevent use for agricultural purposes (the previous titles for the parcels had "ranch" in the name but that doesn't necessarily mean it was used for ranching in the near past).
If conservation easements, etc. are a concern and/or an interest, I would point you to the "About" section of the Trust's site, and also to screenshot 1 from the article.
Read the names and know who is funding these efforts. This is the first step in finding connections and assessing motive.
https://open.substack.com/pub/coloradoaccountabilityproject/p/swampiness-in-wildlife-policy-and?r=15ij6n&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
https://www.skyhinews.com/news/colorado-headwaters-land-trust-closes-on-long-awaited-granby-conservation-easement/
https://www.coloradoheadwaterslandtrust.org/
Artificial Intelligence (AI) in news.
AI has been in the news a lot lately. The article below is the first time that I've seen it literally in the news from a major outlet.**
And by "literally in the news" here I mean that it was used in the production of news. Screenshot 1 attached, from the CPR article linked first below, hints at how AI was used to help create the article.
In a rare fit of listening to people that are normally invisible to public media (if you're worried, don't be--I suspect this will be short-lived because similar efforts followed the first Trump election and then died away), NPR worked in collaboration with a group that collated and organized several recorded interviews from across the country using computers.
I followed the link to the group that NPR worked with, Cortico (linked second below for convenience), to learn more. I am left with more questions here than answers.
In broad strokes, it seems this group has programmed a computer to listen to human conversations and extract from it a summary and a series of repeated themes. These themes/summaries are then presented to a human to enable him or her to seek patterns. These patterns are then used to share with others and further discussion.
With, of course, the lofty goals listed on the group's page of "surfacing" real voices and healing polarization and division.
How well can a computer do this task? Hell, how well can a human?
I have read cases prior to this of AI having some form or another of bias. If it manifests there, it will manifest in this AI. How well can we trust this program's ability to be fair? Evenhanded?
I can't speak for how the programmers set things up, but I know humans well enough to know that we have a confirmation bias. I wonder (doubt?) whether this AI decision-engine would be powerful enough to overcome this bias. I wonder whether it would simply redirect said bias.
I guess time will tell whether or not this can meet the group's goals. I suppose what I would hope for is what I hope for when I see or read about new gee-whiz technology coming to education: that it is viewed mainly as an adjunct, as a help for already experienced hands to put to use.
**I have seen several instances of AI generated content being pushed as "news" in the past, but these tend to be aggregators and/or clickbait kinds of sites and thus not really noteworthy in my opinion.
https://www.cpr.org/2024/12/19/they-dont-live-where-we-live-how-communities-hear-each-other-in-a-divided-country/
https://cortico.ai/about/
Ag buildings should have been exempt from the latest round of energy efficiency requirements.
But it seems that the Colorado Energy Office (CEO) never got the memo.
A 2021 bill required the CEO to establish energy use and efficiency standards for large buildings in Colorado. Agricultural operations/buildings were to have been exempt, but since the establishment of the standards I, and my state senator Byron Pelton, have been hearing rumors about the CEO trying to force the standards on them.
When I directly ask the CEO for information, I get the usual government pablum. See the first link below for the context on the law and one of the responses I've received from the CEO (I've been at them twice now).
I just recently heard from Sen B Pelton that he is running a bill this coming legislative session to make clear what apparently wasn't before: his bill specifically tells the executive branch that yes, Ag buildings (all of them) are exempt.
Sen Pelton sent me a copy of the bill so I linked to it below. As of now it's a draft, but it's one I hope to speak on when it hits committee. Be watching for updates here, contact Sen B Pelton, or bookmark his legislative page if you would like to follow suit.
https://open.substack.com/pub/coloradoaccountabilityproject/p/does-ag-weiser-support-yet-more-gun?r=15ij6n&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
https://leg.colorado.gov/sites/default/files/images/committees/bill_d_25-0159.01.pdf